A detailed guide for making an app like Wayfair

Many popular online furniture shopping platforms like the Wayfair app are making extraordinary profits in their business. Also, most of the users prefer online platforms for purchasing furniture because they get a wide variety of furniture to choose from.

The preference for choosing an online platform for shopping by users has made furniture shop owners expand their business online. Moreover, investors and entrepreneurs succeed to enter this business without having their furniture shop by bringing furniture buyers and sellers on their platform and taking commissions from each sale.

Know how you can create an online platform similar to Wayfair app from this blog. But first, let’s learn more about the Wayfair app.

What is the Wayfair app?

Wayfair is an American e-commerce company that offers furniture, kitchen appliances, home decors, and other relevant products.

The brand provides its digital platform to allow its customers to do online shopping. Moreover, Wayfair provides sales on its products and items regularly. 

The digital platform Wayfair provides different search filters for customers to help them search and select products easily. The filters include pricing, colors, customer rating, decor style, brands, etc. 

You can check some important data about the Wayfair app.

Started in	August 2002
Headquarters	Boston, Massachusetts
Founder	Steve Conine
CEO	Niraj Shah
Annual revenue	$13.7 billion (2021)
Available Platforms	Web, Android, iOS

Now, let’s understand how the Wayfair app makes money.

How does Wayfair make money?

Wayfair works on the basis of a drop shipping business model. Instead of buying inventory, the brands have a wide range of supplying networks that deliver their furniture or other relevant products to customers’ addresses. 

Wayfair works as a middleman between furniture buyers and sellers by proving its digital platform for making deals. Whenever customers order the listed products on the Wayfair platform, the supplier gets notified and ships the products to the customers’ address. 

Once the customer makes a payment on the Wayfair app, the platform takes a commission from each purchase made by the customer. Moreover, another way through which Wayfair makes money is by advertising. Wayfair promotes the products of suppliers to their customers and makes money.  To know the working of the Wayfair app, let’s understand its business model.

The business model of the Wayfair app

To understand the working of the Wayfair app even better, let’s check out its business model. The business model will help you track your project.

The business model of the Wayfair app comes into nine different parts

1. Key partners

Wayfair works in collab with various business partners to provide its services. The business partners are mentioned as follows:

• Delivery companies.
• Payment processors.

2. Key Activities

These are the main activities that Wayfair performs for running its business.   

• Platform development
• Catalog & Supplier management

3. Cost structure

Even after the platform development, the company has to spend capital on the following things

• Advertising & Marketing  
• Employees

4. Value proposition

The Wayfair brand attracts more customers to its platform by having its focus on 

• Finding the right product.
• Offering a wide range of products

5. Customer relationship

These help the brand to create a better image among its customers. The brands do this in the following ways. 

• Taking customer feedback
• Customer support

6. Customer segments

Wayfair’s platform consists of two different customer segments. These segments are responsible for running the Wayfair business. 

• Product buyers
• Product sellers

7. Key resources

These are the most important assets that help Wayfair to establish its business model. 

• Brand
• Technology platform
• Agreements with sellers

8. Channels

The platform is running its e-commerce business by establishing its platform in the following digital places. 

• Its official website
• Wayfair mobile App

9. Revenue stream 

These are the ways through which the Wayfair app makes money from its platform.  

• Product sales 
• Advertising

Moreover, the feature that makes the Wayfair app stand out among its competitor is allowing users to experience the visuals of items through Augmented Reality.

Why is adding AR best for your furniture store app?

Adding AR helps users experience the design of furniture and other items uniquely. Moreover, the app owner can also benefit from adding AR to e-commerce apps in different ways. All the benefits of AR are as follows:

1. Boosting sales & minimizing returns

Many customers avoid buying products if they don’t find any AR option to access the visuals of furniture in their room. Adding AR increases the conversion of store visitors into customers. 

Also, AR limits the rate of product returns because customers can make final purchasing decisions. Through Augmented Reality, they don’t have to worry about the interiors by experiencing the visuals of the furniture in the room. 

2. Better Customer engagement

Checking the visuals of the room by adding virtual items through AR gives an engaging way for customers to try new products. If the customer loved any specific furniture or other products, they would buy or add that product to the wishlist for future purchase.

3. Helps in product recommendations

After collecting customers’ data using AR to get an idea about the look of products in the room, the app owner can use AR-based collected data to give a personalized product experience which can boost sales, providing additional profits to the business.

Moreover, you can add many exclusive and advanced features to your e-commerce app to make it even better than your business competitors. 

Must-have features for online stores like the Wayfair app.

1. Augmented Reality 

AR will help users to visualize the look of furniture in their rooms. Using AR will also give an additional way to collect users’ data through which you can provide personalized product recommendations to your customers.      

2. 3D room planner

The room planner helps users to customize their room virtually. The users can customize their digital rooms with different layouts, styles, space dimensional, etc.  

3. Product Wishlist

A wishlist is a better way for customers to add their favorite products. You can add this feature to help customers bookmark their favorite products so the app can remind them to buy in the future.    

4. AI-based voice assistant

App users can use the AI-based voice assistant feature to search products for other voice commands like tracking orders, accessing their cart/wishlist, etc. The features will benefit many users who don’t like typing with their hands all the time. There are many benefits of adding AI to your app. 

5. ML-based product recommendation

You can provide personalized product recommendations for your app users through Machine learning. Product recommendations can boost sales in online furniture shopping apps, as users are more likely to buy relevant products based on their interests and needs. 

Along with these advanced features, you can check some basic features that you may have seen in almost every app, which helps in providing a better app experience for users.

Basic features for Wayfair-like app.

It will be better to discuss the most common features in all the apps, including apps to buy furniture for users and the admin. Knowing these features will ensure you don’t miss out on any necessary parts of your app.

I. User Panel Features

These features will be helpful for customers, from profile creation to purchasing products from your app. 

1. Quick Sign-in/Signup

Adding quick sign-up allows app users to avoid the lengthy registration process. You can add social media integration to your app to enable users to do a quick sign-up on your app. 

2. Push notifications

Notifications will help your app increase user retention. The notification also increases product sales as you can remind them about deals on the products they have added to the cart or app wishlist.  

3. Multiple Payment methods

Allowing multiple payment methods on your platform will help customers make payments based on their preferences. In the age of digitalization, many customers prefer different payment options along with cash on delivery like credit/debit cards, mobile wallets, net banking, Buy now Pay later, etc. 

4. Multiple language support

Along with the English language, you can include many native languages based on your targeted areas and countries. Accessing the app through your native language will help you get more customers who feel uncomfortable with the English language. 

5. Custom search and filters

You can include a custom search and filter option to allow app users to find and search the most relevant products based on their needs and requirements. 

Customers get their required products on their search results in less time through search filters, increasing the chance of more sales on your platform. 

II. Admin Panel Features

Seller or you can use these features to manage customers’ orders and products on your platform. etc. Or, like the Wayfair app, you can provide an Admin panel to the registered sellers on your platform. 

1. Product category management

The sellers can manage their products on your platform. The features help inventory suppliers create product descriptions, manage ratings, upload product images, etc.  

2. Shipping and delivery management

The inventory suppliers can track shipping and delivery status on the admin panel through this management feature. Also, it helps sellers check the entire shipment & delivery history to find what products are selling well on their platform. 

3. Payment management

The feature helps suppliers to manage the payment of their customers. The supplier can easily track the payment status of all their customers. 

Check the app development process for making an app similar to Wayfair. Understanding the app development process helps you to keep track of your project. 

4. Customer Support

You can allow customers to ask doubts by providing customer support. Customers can ask about their doubts in different ways, like in the product FAQ section or by exploring answers in the help section. Moreover, you can provide live chat and call support within your app to provide a better shopping experience for your customer by clearing their doubts.

You can become aware of your app development journey from planning to launching by understanding the development process for making an app similar to Wayfair.

A detailed process of furniture store app development

You can check a detailed process for furniture store app development. Knowing the process will help you understand project development. Moreover, having proper knowledge of the app development process will help you better explain your ideas to the app developer, giving better project results. 

1. App Planning and Strategy

The stage involves deep research on the e-commerce market, especially the online furniture selling market. The study will help you find the drawbacks and areas of improvement in the e-commerce market. 

Filling all the limitations of the furniture-based e-commerce market by introducing new features for each drawback can help your app to get more customers on your platform. 

2. Choosing the development team

Once you come up with a better app idea, now, you will choose a reliable and experienced software-making company for your online furniture store app project. 

After selecting your development team, you will explain all the features (maybe design) you want in your app and the targeted platform where you want to launch your app. Also, you can choose hybrid or native app development for different platforms, technologies required for making your app, etc.    

3. UI/UX design

The look of your app also matters for giving a pleasant app experience for your users. The stage will include deciding app wireframe, deciding app orientation, working on CTA buttons, etc.

Experienced app developers will help you make a fully functional app with an attractive and clean User Interface by choosing the best wireframe tools, color scheme, graphics, and logo for your app. 

4. Backend development 

App developers will start coding to program your app. The programmer will program APIs, functions, and classes to make your app fully functional on the backend side. 

5. Optimizing app performance

In this stage, the focus will be on different factors for enabling better optimization for your app. The developers will try to make your app compatible to handle maximum app traffic, ensuring your app will perform well on different platforms, etc.

6. Providing better app security

Giving better app security help you to get your customers’ trust. Developers will focus on different factors to make your app secure, like adding OTP verification, providing a secure payment gateway, and many other security measures for app development.

7. Doing app testing

Once your app is ready to get published, before app publishing, the development team will test your app multiple times to ensure your app works fine and performs well. 

If they find any technical issues, they will try to fix them quickly and then work on finding and fixing other problems until they find and resolve all the issues and drawbacks. 

8. Increase the reachability of your app

Optimizing your app in the app store and other platforms is necessary to increase your app’s reach to your targeted customers. 

To expand your app’s reach, you can focus on :

1. Following app store guidelines
2. Giving a detailed app description on different platforms, 
3. Doing proper SEO, 
4. Explainer videos about using your app, etc.

Knowing an online furniture store’s profitability will help you understand why investing in this business can bring you better profits.

Why invest in the online furniture store business? 

Furniture is a top priority for users who want to improve their home’s interior. Along with homes, there are many places with high furniture demand, such as offices, restaurants, and many other business places.   

According to fortune business insights, the global market size of this business was around 493.6 Billion USD in 2021, which is expected to reach 720.2 Billion USD at a growing CAGR of 5.5%.  

Also, you can check how furniture-based keywords managed to become the top priority among web users from the given data. 

Understanding the tech requirement will help estimate the difficulty level in this eCommerce-based app development project.   

The Required team structure & tech stack

Developing your app will require the following tech stack and team structure. Knowing the development needs in advance will help you plan better for launching your e-commerce business. 

Front-end	React JS, VueJS, HTML, CSS
Push Notifications	Push, Twilio, Firebase, Cloud Messaging
Back-end	Node.js, Python, Golang, Laravel
Server	NGINX, Apache
Cloud Services	AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure
Database	MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis
Analytics	BigData, Hadoop, Spark, Apache Flink
Mobile Platform	Swift, Kotlin, Java for Native, Flutter, React Native for cross-platform
Location	Google Places API, Google Maps

Let’s move to the end of this blog to summarize all at once.

Upgrade your business or start it from scratch! 

Since the introduction of Augmented Reality (AR) technology in shopping apps, business owners have seen greater engagement on their platforms and are making more sales. 

You can contact Idea Uher if you want to upgrade your business by adding AR to your business. Also, you can call us to get your e-commerce app developed by our development team starting from scratch.  

Call us for a free consultation on your doubts regarding AR technology or starting your e-commerce business.

Frequently Asked Questions

In case you are facing some doubts regarding app development, you can check some most frequent questions asked by entrepreneurs/developers at the time of app development of online furniture stores. 

1. How to Make a Furniture Website?

You can make your furniture website by outsourcing your project to a software-making company. Moreover, we advise you to develop your app with a website to expand your business’s reachability.  

2. What is the Wayfair app?

Wayfair is an online e-commerce platform. Wayfair sells furniture and other household-related items. 

3. Is the online furniture business profitable?

Definitely yes, the global market size of the furniture was around 493.6 Billion USD in 2021. There is high demand for furniture in different places, be it offices, restaurants, homes, etc.